Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T09:30:50.195Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Virals, Memes, and the Lick's Circulation through Online Jazz Communities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2022

HANNAH JUDD Open the ORCID record for HANNAH JUDD [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 2011, Alex Heitlinger, a senior at New England Conservatory, uploaded the video ‘The Lick’ to YouTube. The 1′34″ compilation excerpted a range of performances that each deployed the same seven-note ‘lick’. This article explores the digital dissemination of videos and memes that feature the Lick, suggesting its function as a mimetic device users can deploy to signal their belonging and individuality within a larger jazz community. The Lick, in its formulaic deployment within these ‘insider’ spaces, moves away from improvisation and becomes a calling card for performers and listeners alike to determine a legitimate participant, on and offline. The Lick's online proliferation becomes a gimmick through its repetition, pointing to its hyper-presence and complaints about the excessive posts of the Lick becoming recycled into over-repeated jokes. I argue the Lick serves as the basis for a study of humour and gimmickry in jazz identity formation.

Type
Article
Information
Twentieth-Century Music , Volume 19 , Special Issue 3: Listening In: Musical Digital Communities in Public and Private , October 2022 , pp. 393 - 410
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography

Ake, David. Jazz Cultures. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berliner, Sasha. ‘The Shitposting of Jazz to Come’. Facebook, 12 February 2018. www.facebook.com/groups/745582758958047/permalink/867675916748730/ (accessed August 2018).Google Scholar
Cantor, Hallie. ‘Ten Cool Ways to Seem Like You Know a Lot About Jazz’. CollegeHumor, 27 June 2014. www.collegehumor.com/post/6977550/how-to-seem-like-you-know-a-lot-about-jazz (accessed August 2018).Google Scholar
Chinen, Nate. ‘The Gig: Behold the Jazzbro’. JazzTimes, 2013, updated 1 November 2021. https://jazztimes.com/features/columns/the-gig-behold-the-jazzbro/ (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Doffman, Mark. ‘Jammin’ an Ending: Creativity, Knowledge, and Conduct among Jazz Musicians’. Twentieth-Century Music 8/2 (2011), 203–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graham, David A. ‘Why Did This Band Recreate Jazz's Most Famous Record Note-for-Note?’ The Atlantic, 28 October 2014. www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/when-is-a-miles-davis-record-not-jazz/381983/ (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Grundlingh, L. ‘Memes as Speech Acts’. Social Semiotics 28/2 (2018), 147–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harper, Paula. ‘Unmute This: Circulation, Sociality, and Sound in Viral Media’. PhD diss., Columbia University, 2019.Google Scholar
Heitlinger, Alex. Interview with the author. 30 July 2018.Google Scholar
Heitlinger, Alex. ‘The Lick’. Facebook, www.facebook.com/thelickpage/posts/10150454647067880 (accessed August 2018).Google Scholar
Hine, Christine. ‘Virtual Ethnography’, 3rd International Conference on Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST). Montreal, Canada, 10–13 April 1994.Google Scholar
Jackson, Lauren M. ‘We Need to Talk about Digital Blackface in Gifs’. Teen Vogue, 2 August 2017. www.teenvogue.com/story/digital-blackface-reaction-gifs (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
‘Jam of the Week’. Facebook, 12 February 2018. www.facebook.com/groups/jamoftheweekgroup/.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Henry, Ford, Sam, and Green, Joshua. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Jones, Steve, ed. Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues and Methods for Examining the Net. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
‘The Lick’. Facebook. www.facebook.com/thelickpage/?fref=nf (accessed August 2018).Google Scholar
Lorenz, Taylor. ‘Elon Musk: Memelord or Meme Lifter?’ New York Times, 7 May 2021. www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/style/elon-musk-memes.html (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Lysloff, René T.A. ‘Musical Community on the Internet: An On-line Ethnography’. Cultural Anthropology 18 (2003), 233–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neely, Adam. ‘The Lick NFT, Give Me Money Please’. Twitter, 3 January 2022, 4:44 PM EST. https://twitter.com/its_adamneely/status/1478120020710506498 (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Ngai, Sianne. ‘Theory of the Gimmick’. Critical Inquiry 43/2 (2017), 466–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popmatters Staff. ‘Kind of, Kind of Blue: A Conversation with Mostly Other People Do the Killing’. PopMatters, 24 February 2018. www.popmatters.com/185662-kind-of-kind-of-blue-a-conversation-with-mostly-other-people-do-the--2495616921.html (accessed August 2018).Google Scholar
Prouty, Ken. Knowing Jazz: Community, Pedagogy, and Canon in the Information Age. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 2013.Google Scholar
Rodriguez, Alex. ‘A Brief History of Jazz Education’. NPR, 2 November 2012. www.npr.org/sections/ablogsupreme/2012/10/26/163741653/a-brief-history-of-jazz-education-pt-1 (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Rosenblatt, Kathy. ‘A TikTok Strike Highlighted Issues of Compensation and Race in the Creator Economy’. NBCUniversal News Group, 4 July 2021. www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/tiktok-strike-highlighted-issues-compensation-race-creator-economy-n1272903 (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Ruse, Michael. ‘meme’, in Encyclopedia of Semiotics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195120905.001.0001/acref-9780195120905-e-187 (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Seeger, Charles. ‘Versions and Variants of the Tunes of “Barbara Allen”’. Selected Reports of the University of California at Los Angeles Institute of Ethnomusicology 1/1 (1966), 120–67.Google Scholar
Shifman, Limor. Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Steyerl, Hito. ‘In Defense of the Poor Image’. e-flux Journal 10 (2009). www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/ (accessed August 2018).Google Scholar
West, Jason. ‘What Is Jazz? Good Question…’ All About Jazz, 12 January 2012. www.allaboutjazz.com/what-is-jazz-good-question-by-jason-west.php (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Wittel, Andreas. ‘Ethnography on the Move: From Field to Net to Internet’. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research 1/1 (2000). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-1.1.1131.Google Scholar
Brent, Andy. ‘The Woodshed #666 – Andy Brent Plays The Licc 10,000 Times’. YouTube, 26 June 2018. www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3i9i7fuN5k (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Fransman, Simon. ‘On Green Dolphin Street – JOTW’. YouTube, 12 December 2017. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohCnjVvDd3A (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Heitlinger, Alex. ‘The Lick’. YouTube, 12 November 2011. www.youtube.com/watch?v=krDxhnaKD7Q (accessed August 2018).Google Scholar
Jish the Fish. ‘The Lick for 10 Hours’. YouTube, 9 April 2017. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DcYnKL8l-Q (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Neely, Adam. ‘Why Did I Play the Lick for 5 Hours Nonstop? | Q A #43’. YouTube, 25 December 2017. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMo9N40_hpo (accessed August 2018).Google Scholar
New York Jazz Academy. ‘“The Lick” in all 12 Keys’. YouTube, 3 April 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVzK1znrBD0 (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Sprankle, Josiah. ‘“The Lick,” but It's a 3-Voice Fugue in the Style of J.S. Bach’. YouTube, 12 May 2020. www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9WE7fMfbRk (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Brent, Andy. ‘The Woodshed #666 – Andy Brent Plays The Licc 10,000 Times’. YouTube, 26 June 2018. www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3i9i7fuN5k (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Fransman, Simon. ‘On Green Dolphin Street – JOTW’. YouTube, 12 December 2017. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohCnjVvDd3A (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Heitlinger, Alex. ‘The Lick’. YouTube, 12 November 2011. www.youtube.com/watch?v=krDxhnaKD7Q (accessed August 2018).Google Scholar
Jish the Fish. ‘The Lick for 10 Hours’. YouTube, 9 April 2017. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DcYnKL8l-Q (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Neely, Adam. ‘Why Did I Play the Lick for 5 Hours Nonstop? | Q A #43’. YouTube, 25 December 2017. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMo9N40_hpo (accessed August 2018).Google Scholar
New York Jazz Academy. ‘“The Lick” in all 12 Keys’. YouTube, 3 April 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVzK1znrBD0 (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar
Sprankle, Josiah. ‘“The Lick,” but It's a 3-Voice Fugue in the Style of J.S. Bach’. YouTube, 12 May 2020. www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9WE7fMfbRk (accessed 22 July 2022).Google Scholar